Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Re: [LINUX_Newbies] Mint Debian, hijack of "'Re: Debian Lenny..."

I like GNOME Shell, but that is just me. I don't think that most users are
like me. I use KDE and love Activities. I have nine of them with different
work spaces that are contextual instead of spatial, although I use spatial
as well with four virtual desktops on each. I don't need all of that and
will likely refine it as I go. From what I have seen of GNOME Shell, it
suits me and I will likely use it from time to time. However, I work with
lots of newbies and think that it is going to give them fits. I also can't
see many veteran users adapting to it easily. You need to be willing to
embrace new things to like either GNOME Shell or Unity.

I think that Unity will be fine in the end but it has a way to go. It is
like the KDE 4 fiasco where KDE released it before it was ready for prime
time and it lost users, including Linus Torvalds, to GNOME. I think that KDE
will gain back some of that, especially among newbies, and XFCE will win
over many veteran users. Distros like Mint will gain users in the short run,
but in the long run could lose out if it can only attract disaffected users,
which will diminish over time.

It will be interesting what Ubuntu does over the long run because they are
beginning to include QT parts. Unity 2D is written in QT and Shuttleworth
has said that Ubuntu will include good QT apps. That could be a game changer
with Unity being the best of both GNOME and KDE. I do that now, but few
users venture beyond the pre-installed desktop environment and its
applications.

Fedora has many veterans and power users and not too many newbies. I think
that those users will find solutions of their own, but Fedora has a history
of supporting GNOME and KDE, so it will likely stick with them officially,
and not try to do an end run like Mint. No offense to Mint users, but
essentially that is what they are doing. That is okay because that is what
open source is all about. You don't like something, then you are free to
change it. I am just not too sure that they can play this card too often and
still be regarded as cutting edge.

Roy

Using Kubuntu 10.10, 64-bit
Location: Canada


On 1 March 2011 17:55, Scott <scottro@nyc.rr.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 05:07:22PM -0500, Roy wrote:
> >
> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linux-Mint-11-Will-Be-Based-on-Ubuntu-11-04-185617.shtml
> >
> > Clem's blog. Note comment 4 below from Clem:
> > http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1665
> >
> > It seems they will be *not* going with GNOME Shell but will be going with
> > GNOME 3 that will look similar to what they have now. This could be an
>
> > GNOME 3 without the panel and with a Java interface. It is just too
> > different and will confuse many newbies. Bad enough moving to Linux from
> > Windows and then to find a very foreign environment without a start
> button,
> > menu or panel. And for veterans there are no virtual desktops and no
> Compiz
> > which is what many people like about Linux. I am not sure if GNOME 3
> without
> > the shell will support Compiz, but virtual desktops should be available.
> > This is also an opportunity for KDE and XFCE where both still work fine.
>
> Judging from what I'm seeing on Fedora forums, a lot of folks just don't
> like it. On the other hand, as Jeff said in the past (on this list?), a
> lot of folks didn't like OS X's interface either. (Looking at pictures
> of OS X's upcoming Lion interface, there may be reaction there too--for
> folks who put everything on their desktop, it's not leaving much room,
> looks like an iphone or ipad interface.
>
> Several folks on Fedora forums are talking of changing to Scientific
> Linux or CentOS when it comes out, solely because of this. Others are
> talking of switching to KDE.
>
> As for me, I use fluxbox or openbox, so it's not important to me,
> personally, though, looking at the changes, I see why folks are getting
> irked.
>
> --
> Scott Robbins
> PGP keyID EB3467D6
> ( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
> gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6
>
>
>


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